Live 5....what happened?

[sgx]

I've seen this commented on, but still don't really understand the issue I use Reason to create beats within Ableton Live constantly.

Without PDC and if you are using Reason's own sequencer then everything between Live and Reason is in sync. The render and real time play is spot on. However, without PDC some of your soft synths and effects in Live start to lag, especially if you have made some long VST chains.

This was the standard set up in Live 3 and earlier. Its workable, but not perfect.

Live 4 added midiclips and now in theory you can control Reason in Live. However in Live 5, there is a lag [an audible 5mS on my machine] between hearing the reason output and the midi message that fired it. This lag depends on sound card settings, but Live appears to treat rewire inputs as an external input and is therefore bound by the usual latency problems.

Live 5 added PDC, but PDC can't compensate for rewire inputs at all. Actually its worse than that, its broken. Try adding negative values of track delay on any midi channel that goes to either a rewire or an external midi instrument, and hear the effect it has on any rewired input. Its truly bizarre. In other words one cannot even manually compensate for the lag, as you could in Tracktion.

But even if you leave the track delays at the zero position, Reason will lag behind. Far more than the 5mS we got without PDC, it can be a full 20mS if you have VST effects in other channels. I don't mean VST effecting rewire inputs or outputs, I mean any VST effect in audio and Live based VSTi tracks.

Even rendered audio suffers from this. Its not just me though, the Abe's have confirmed it and it is to be looked in a future revision.

Wow that's messed up! I was close to purchasing Live5 to use as my main host and controlling a LOT of Reason with it, but now I don't know. What do you think? (I've got my eye on Acid Pro 6 now also).

[grymmjack]

well its not my fault, dude. ableton claims win98 compability ans all updates since 5.03 worked with no problem. and what u think of win98 is err, not very intersting to me.

Fair enough.

[headquest]

Given the care of Ableton, the speed of their develpement, and the thousands who use the Live/Reason combination, I think we can be fairly confident that this PDC rewire issue will be fixed in Live 5.2 when it arrives in February

@ synthbuilder: Thanks for the detailed explanation, which makes sense. I think the reason I have not experienced problems is perhaps because I bounce each track straight to audio in Live anyway.

I hope this hasn't upset your enjoyment of Ableton Live too much

@ sgx: Don't let this issue influence your decision too heavily. As you probably spotted from the rest of the thread, Ableton love their product and always sort out issues VERY quickly (compared to most of the others).

[ravasb]

I have Ableton 5 and really like it a lot, but I think it is having some of the same issues as Acid, which means it is currently moving past its core functionality and heading toward a fully fledged DAW like Cubase or Sonar. It is not there yet, but might someday be. The abes are phenomenal at doing what attracted most of us to Live, but seem to be experiencing a fairly steep learning curve themselves in remaking Live as a DAW. I like the product enough to go along with the ride, but I would not be ready to use it as my only or at least main DAW for quite a while.

[headquest]

As a matter of interest ravasb, what is missing for you in Live 5 that stops it at present being your main DAW?

One reason I ask is that in addition to Live 5 I have Sonar 5 PE (which I imagine most people would recognise as a "fully-featured" DAW...) but mostly I prefer Live...

[ravasb]

As a matter of interest ravasb, what is missing for you in Live 5 that stops it at present being your main DAW?

One reason I ask is that in addition to Live 5 I have Sonar 5 PE (which I imagine most people would recognise as a "fully-featured" DAW...) but mostly I prefer Live...

For my own work, I really like a score editor, step sequencer, and good quality audio processing without going to an external editor. I also want a good tool box with splitting and gluing tools.

I would like to be able to see both views at once. The constant switching can be a little annoying at times.

I also find mastering in Live a bit difficult as well.

I think Live is a fantastic product, and I plan on using for the distant future. I love it for taking bits of unfinished projects and making something really interesting out of them. I love it for creating new ideas from scratch. I love what its effects do to my boring old samples.

However, I still like Sonar better when it comes to making the complete track.

[headquest]

Thanks ravasb. That's a really interesting reply that perfectly illustrates how one person's need in their DAW might be very different from anothers...

For my own work, I really like a score editor,

Score editing is important to me too (I am a classical musician) but for that I own/use Sibelius 3. If I intend to include scoring in a piece, I normally start it off in Sibelius first... and then import the files as MIDI into Live (or Sonar). I find score editing in Sonar very fiddly and yet frustratingly basic compared to Sibelius, which is obviously a specialised program for this particular task.

step sequencer,

Being a pianist/keyboard player I really have no need for Step Sequencing. I like pattern sequencing (e.g. for drums, or for creating minimalist pieces) and other than that I tend to play stuff in live from my keyboard.

and good quality audio processing without going to an external editor.

For this I use Adobe Audition (just upgraded to version 2.0 which is fantastic!). A single click from Ableton opens a file up in Audition, from where I can do much more detailed audio editing than is possible in any sequencer (Sonar included). Audition is in fact an indispensable part of my setup.

I also find mastering in Live a bit difficult as well.

Agreed. But I also find it a bit difficult in Sonar. I like to be able to see the waveform and analyse it (including looking at frequency spectrum anaylsis, etc). I like to see the effect of adding multiband, etc, as well as listen. Once again I do that in Audition.

I also want a good tool box with splitting and gluing tools.

I may misunderstand you there, but I think the split and consolidate tools in Ableton Live's arrangement view are spot on for splitting and glueing.

Because I have Sibelius for scoring, Audition for detailed audio editing and mastering, and Reason 3.0 in my setup, Live 5 makes the perfect DAW that sits in the middle and brings it all together.

I recently got Sonar 5 PE mostly for educational purposes, and for use with students. I do like to use its Sonitus effects and Perfect Space in Audition too. It is a powerful programme and I like it a lot, but in terms of my own personal creative workflow I think that in the forseeable future it will remain mostly on the sidelines. It doesn't integrate particularly well with my other software, but it is great as a stnadalone programme for education.

[Jed]

Hi Headquest,

I also have Live and Sonar, the idea being to develop ideas in Live and import into Sonar via rewire. The biggest pain though is that I have to freeze every VSTi track before rewiring, because Live can't run VSTi's in rewire mode.

So now I'm trying Project5 for idea generation (sketchpad)as its a doddle to integate into S5 when ready - and I'm really liking it. Simple to use - great workflow and very stable.

Cheers
Jed

[opia]

I think it's best to keep in mind that Live is now hugely popular, so there are more users and therefore more apparent bugs and problems.

so maybe the hype is dissepating and it'll get a cute nick-name like cubarse did

[meister eder]

The biggest pain though is that I have to freeze every VSTi track before rewiring, because Live can't run VSTi's in rewire mode.

Can any Rewire slave run VST plugins? I was told this was more due to the Rewire specification than to the application itself.

[headquest]

The biggest pain though is that I have to freeze every VSTi track before rewiring, because Live can't run VSTi's in rewire mode.

Can any Rewire slave run VST plugins? I was told this was more due to the Rewire specification than to the application itself.

Yes I think others can - FL certainly can and I believe that P5v2 can.

I believe that the reason that Live can't is quite simply because its rewire functionality was added before it took on MIDI sequencing and VSTi duties. They haven't yet updated the rewire aspect to take account of these other improvements. I guess there's only so many features they can add at breakneck speed

So now I'm trying Project5 for idea generation (sketchpad)as its a doddle to integate into S5 when ready - and I'm really liking it. Simple to use - great workflow and very stable.

I hope that goes well for you. It makes sense if Sonar is your main host to use P5 as a sketchpad for getting ideas together. From my point of view I was into Live before Sonar, and Live is very much my main composing home! I did run the P5v2 demo, but really didn't like it. It's hard to put a finger on exactly why that is, although I did particularly dislike some of P5's instruments (the only one I really did like was Dimension in fact, so I concluded that I would be better off just buying Dimension Pro at some point rather than buying P5).

Cheers.

[ravasb]

Thanks ravasb. That's a really interesting reply that perfectly illustrates how one person's need in their DAW might be very different from anothers...

Headquest,
I pretty much agree with all your points. My original main point was that all the things that people complain about in Live have to do with the abes transitioning their product from its original vision, which was as a live instrument, to a full fledged DAW. I think there is sometimes a danger when a company tries to be all things to all people, and gets away from what made it great in the first place.

If there is any group who can do this it is probably the abes, but I am a little nervous that stability and simplicity will be sacrificed for more features.

[headquest]

Yeah, I'm slightly anxious about Live 6... very happy with Live's present functionality, but I would be nervous about them adding video, notation, event lists, audio editing, etc. The beauty so far with Live is that it is so fast to use and works well. Long may that continue.

[diverdee]

yeah - a little more midi functionality & cleaning up bugs & a few other features that fit in with the workflow - cool.
Adding a load of extraneous shite though that other apps cover better - why bother?
From a couple of intervioews i've read with the abes it seems that they very much have a vision of where they want to go with Live though - & they seem to be heading pretty much in the right direction as far as i'm concerned.

[grymmjack]

One thing I didnt' like about live was it's lack of 'midi' support in the way of choosing presets from banks and so on. Even T2 has this ability. I know the focus is on VSTi inside Live but some of us still have and love external gear... One day maybe...

You should try reading the manual sometime. Particularly page 109 section 8.3.2.

I actually contacted the abes and they said that patch name support and bank choosing is not a current feature/not available.

I have since uninstalled live, and deleted it. What was on that page? Did the tech support guy make an error or did I miss something?